Spain's crisis has also increased grid-time for bought in product, at the expense of costlier in-house fiction.

Hit by still weak consumer demand in Spain, TV ad spend in Spain plunged 8% year-on-year to around Euros1.65 billion ($2.3 billion) in 2013, 53% off its pre-crisis 2007 peak, per a Barlovento Comunicacion year-in-review study.

Movie can also be strategically skedded and re-skedded across Atresmedia TV's swathe of channels, saving on programming costs.

The new Disney movies will play not only Atresmedia's flagship commercial channel Antena 3, but also boutique free-to-air channel La Sexta, urban youth targeting Neox, the femme-skewed Nova, Nitro, which targets male auds, movie channel La Sexta 3 and XPlora, a docu-service. Combined, the channels punch an aggregate 28.7% audience share in Spain and a whopping 42.7% slice of Spain's ad market, establishing Atresmedia as one of the country's two dominant commercial broadcast groups, along with Mediaset Espana.